The Loved One

Waugh’s Hollywood book, and the sharpest thing he wrote at novella length. He had gone to Los Angeles in early 1947 to negotiate the film rights to Brideshead with MGM; the negotiation collapsed, but a tour of Forest Lawn Memorial Park gave him something better. He wrote to his agent that he was entirely obsessed by Forest Lawn, and the result was Whispering Glades — the mortuary as total institution, embalming as liturgy, the euphemism as a complete moral universe.

The publishing history is unusual. The complete text appeared first in the February 1948 issue of Cyril Connolly’s Horizon; the American book edition followed from Little, Brown in the summer; British book publication came only in November — the single occasion on which an American edition of a Waugh novel preceded the English one. This is therefore the first English edition rather than the first appearance in print. Waugh had given Connolly the magazine rights for nothing, in recognition of Horizon’s precarious finances.

Chapman & Hall issued the book in two forms — this trade issue (originally in blue cloth) at 7s 6d, and a signed limited edition of 250 copies at 42s. Asprey of Bond Street sold fine bindings throughout the twentieth century, commissioning the work from the London trade and, from the late 1970s, owning Sangorski & Sutcliffe outright; this binding belongs to that retail programme.